Obscura: A True Crime Podcast

The murder of Cassie Jo Stoddart occurred on September 22, 2006, in Pocatello, Idaho. Our Sponsors: * Check out BetterHelp: https://www.betterhelp.com * Check out Chime and use my code chime.com/OBSCURA for a great deal: https://www.chime.com * Check out Kensington Publishing: https://www.kensingtonbooks.com * Check out TruDiagnostic and use my code OBSCURA20 for a great deal: https://www.trudiagn...

Michael D. Parks pleaded guilty to the murder and decapitation of his wife, Hope Parks, in Crawfordsville, Indiana. Our Sponsors: * Check out BetterHelp: https://www.betterhelp.com * Check out Chime and use my code chime.com/OBSCURA for a great deal: https://www.chime.com * Check out Kensington Publishing: https://www.kensingtonbooks.com * Check out TruDiagnostic and use my code OBSCURA20 for a gr...

Extreme Audio Warning: Towards the back half of this episode, it features audio involving children and a mother in extreme audible distress. Our Sponsors: * Check out BetterHelp: https://www.betterhelp.com * Check out Chime and use my code chime.com/OBSCURA for a great deal: https://www.chime.com * Check out Kensington Publishing: https://www.kensingtonbooks.com * Check out Progressive: https://ww...

Paul John Knowles, famously nicknamed "The Casanova Killer," was an American serial killer who terrorized the United States during a brutal, four-month cross-country crime spree in 1974. Our Sponsors: * Check out BetterHelp: https://www.betterhelp.com * Check out Chime and use my code chime.com/OBSCURA for a great deal: https://www.chime.com * Check out Kensington Publishing: https://www.k...

American serial killer responsible for at least 18 murders during a violent multi-state killing spree.  Our Sponsors: * Check out BetterHelp: https://www.betterhelp.com * Check out Chime and use my code chime.com/OBSCURA for a great deal: https://www.chime.com * Check out Kensington Publishing: https://www.kensingtonbooks.com * Check out Progressive: https://www.progressive.com Support this podcas...

The  Harold Easter case  involves the tragic  in-custody overdose death  of 41-year-old Harold Easter in January 2020 after an arrest by the  Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department (CMPD)  in North Carolina. Our Sponsors: * Check out BetterHelp: https://www.betterhelp.com * Check out Chime and use my code chime.com/OBSCURA for a great deal: https://www.chime.com * Check out Kensington Publishing:...

John Michael Hughes is a convicted murderer from Simpsonville, South Carolina, who, along with members of his family, orchestrated the January 2015 ambush and slaying of his estranged son-in-law, John Michael Ferrell. Our Sponsors: * Check out BetterHelp: https://www.betterhelp.com * Check out Chime and use my code chime.com/OBSCURA for a great deal: https://www.chime.com * Check out Kensington Pu...

Paul Michael Stephani, known as the "Weepy-Voiced Killer," was an American serial killer who murdered three women and attacked two others in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul area between 1980 and 1982.  Our Sponsors: * Check out BetterHelp: https://www.betterhelp.com * Check out Chime and use my code chime.com/OBSCURA for a great deal: https://www.chime.com * Check out Kensington Publishing: ht...

George T. Greer is a Kentucky man who was arrested in February 2024 for a violent samurai sword attack that killed one woman and severely injured two other people while he was under the influence of drugs. Our Sponsors: * Check out BetterHelp: https://www.betterhelp.com * Check out Chime and use my code chime.com/OBSCURA for a great deal: https://www.chime.com * Check out Kensington Publishing: ht...

The tragic 2015 true-crime case of 7-week-old  Data Toria Hancock , an Oregon infant who died of severe starvation and maltreatment. Our Sponsors: * Check out BetterHelp: https://www.betterhelp.com * Check out Chime and use my code chime.com/OBSCURA for a great deal: https://www.chime.com * Check out Kensington Publishing: https://www.kensingtonbooks.com * Check out Progressive: https://www.progre...

Today we explore a tragic 2022 emergency call that shattered a quiet Louisiana neighborhood and left four young children trapped in a real-life nightmare. Outro Song:  Yeah Right Artist: Willa Mae Intro Song: Affliction Artist :  SubRosa Our Sponsors: * Check out BetterHelp: https://www.betterhelp.com * Check out Chime and use my code chime.com/OBSCURA for a great deal: https://www.chime.com * Che...

On September 7, 1997, city park workers discovered the remains of a newborn boy near the Moses statue in Albany's Washington Park. Because his identity was initially unknown, the City of Albany and local funeral directors held a proper, deeply moving memorial service and burial for the infant. Our Sponsors: * Check out BetterHelp: https://www.betterhelp.com * Check out Chime and use my code ch...

On September 7, 1997, city park workers discovered the remains of a newborn boy near the Moses statue in Albany's Washington Park. Because his identity was initially unknown, the City of Albany and local funeral directors held a proper, deeply moving memorial service and burial for the infant. Our Sponsors: * Check out BetterHelp: https://www.betterhelp.com * Check out Chime and use my code ch...

Matthew Hoffman, often referred to as the "Leaf Killer", is an Ohio man serving a life sentence for the 2010 murders of three people and the kidnapping of a 13-year-old girl.  Intro Song: Affliction Artist :  SubRosa Our Sponsors: * Check out BetterHelp: https://www.betterhelp.com * Check out Chime and use my code chime.com/OBSCURA for a great deal: https://www.chime.com * Check out Kensin...

Martinez met a married woman on a dating app. He eventually met up with her and her husband, Anthony Brines. After a night of drinking, smoking marijuana, and using a Ouija board, a violent altercation broke out that would change their lives forever.  Our Sponsors: * Check out BetterHelp and use my code betterhelp.com for a great deal: https://www.betterhelp.com * Check out BetterHelp and use my c...

Obscura is not AI slop. It will never be AI slop. Our Sponsors: * Check out BetterHelp and use my code betterhelp.com for a great deal: https://www.betterhelp.com * Check out BetterHelp and use my code betterhelp.com for a great deal: https://www.betterhelp.com * Check out Quince and use my code quince.com/obscura for a great deal: https://www.quince.com Support this podcast at — https://redcircle...

Canticle: another name for a song Vulnerable:  (of a person) in need of support or protection Our Sponsors: * Check out BetterHelp and use my code betterhelp.com for a great deal: https://www.betterhelp.com * Check out BetterHelp and use my code betterhelp.com for a great deal: https://www.betterhelp.com * Check out Quince and use my code quince.com/obscura for a great deal: https://www.quince.com...

On a scorching July afternoon, a routine arrival home turns into a neighborhood nightmare. A father steps inside his air-conditioned house to play video games, leaving his sleeping toddler in the car under the assumption that the vehicle's cooling system is running. Hours later, emergency sirens pierce the quiet suburban cul-de-sac. Intro Song: Affliction Artist :  SubRosa Our Sponsors: * Chec...

The call went out at roughly one forty in the morning on March sixteenth, 2018, and it pulled the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office toward a scene that the deputies who responded would not be able to put down easily afterward, because some scenes do not let go of the people who walk into them. What waited inside the house is among the worst this show has had occasion to describe Our Sponsors:...

There is a village in the apple country of western New York called Sodus, up in Wayne County near the south shore of Lake Ontario, about thirty miles east of Rochester. This is fruit-belt land, orchard and muck field running back from the lake, roadside stands selling cider in the fall, the big cold lake holding the frost off the trees in spring. In October the orchards go heavy and the light come...

Aileen had been pawning items from her victims: tools missing from David Spears's truck, a camera that had belonged to Richard Mallory, other items linked to other victims. Florida law required pawnshops to take a thumbprint from anyone hocking goods, and the prints were on file. Aileen, while filling out pawnshop intake forms, had been using the alias Cammie Marsh Greene. A signed pawn slip w...

The wooded lot itself was mixed scrub of the sort that grows in the disturbed soil along an interstate corridor in central Florida. Pine. Palmetto. A few scrub oaks. Spanish moss hanging where the canopy thickened. The understory of vines and dead palm fronds that turns any walk off the shoulder into a careful one. The lot was bordered on one side by the interstate, on another by a service road, a...

This is part two of a four part series. Last episode, we walked her childhood. The fire at age six. The grandfather and the belt. The kitten in the bucket. The cigarette pig nickname at age eleven. The pregnancy at fourteen. The baby boy taken from her in March of 1971. Her grandmother Britta dying that July. Her grandfather throwing her out a few weeks later. The sleeping bag in the woods on the...

She had stopped going to school. She had no money. There was no adult on the planet looking for her. What she had was a sleeping bag in the snow. Her name was Aileen Carol Pittman. The world would come to know her by her grandparents’ last name. Wuornos. Our Sponsors: * Check out BetterHelp and use my code betterhelp.com for a great deal: https://www.betterhelp.com * Check out BetterHelp and use m...

In 2011, a quiet neighborhood in Bakersfield, California, was shattered by a crime so severe it left veteran investigators shaken. The case began with the frantic search for a missing eight-year-old girl and ended in a tense, seven-hour SWAT standoff. Ray Coriell, the man at the center of the storm, faced a barrage of charges that exposed a harrowing betrayal of trust and a level of violence that...